Digital Initiatives Program

Digital Initiatives Program

Digital Initiatives is responsible for the care and feeding of the University of Washington Libraries ResearchWorks Service. This service is designed to assist faculty, researchers and students at the University of Washington to engage in open access initiatives such as journal hosting, media publishing, and self-archiving of author pre-prints, post-prints and other data generated during research at the UW.

Digital Initiatives staff consult on content creation issues such as digitization guidelines, costs involved in undertaking a digitzation project, the creation of metadata for description of and access to digital files, and project planning and workflow management.

We also help with the software to display, store and archive digital files. The Libraries currently runs three software packages to assist in the access to and display of digital files – CONTENTdm, DSpace, and Open Journal Systems. You may see how the Libraries use these software packages by visiting the ResearchWorks Service.

Digital Initiatives also consults on issues of preservation including appropriate standards for the long-term viability of digital files. We can also recommend standards for the description of digital objects based on the needs and goals of a project.